And Ruin Followed Behind Her

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Elka closed her shop early. Not much she could sell with a blood stain on the floor. We tried to clean it up as best we could, but no matter how hard we scrubbed, the blood would not come out. Until she got a brand-new carpet, I doubted she would be able to open it for customers. I think there was some sort of health code against that somewhere.

I had been on the phone with the hospital for over an hour. The nurses bounced me around from department to department, but none of them could find a Chuck Dixon listed in their paperwork.

“Yes,” I said, holding the receiver of a phone up to my ear. “That’s correct. I’m trying to get any information you have on Chuck Dixon. I’m a family friend.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the latest nurse said. “I don’t see that name.”

I tried to contain my anger, but it wasn’t easy. The adrenaline from everything that happened in the past day still ran through me. “What about John Doe? Do you have any John Does who came in with a bullet wound earlier today?”

“Hang on,” the nurse said. I could hear her flipping through her registry. “Yes, I do have one John Doe who fits that description. He’s out of surgery, in critical but stable condition.”

I let out a long sigh of relief, as if all the fear built in my body released at once. “Thank you.”

I placed down the receiver and turned to Elka, who sat on the floor near the front of her store, as far away from the bloodstain as she could manage without being outside the store. “Is he okay?” she asked.

“As well as can be expected, given the circumstances.” It was all my fault, but at least he would be okay...eventually.

She smiled, patting the floor next to her. “Good. Now, we can begin.”

I walked over and sat down next to her, cross legged. “Yes, now I can focus.”

“Listen to your breath,” Elka told me. “It is your best guide. You must see where you are going in your mind’s eye, and for that you need control and focus. Tell me about your last disappearance.”

“I tried to get Chuck to the hospital and it didn’t work. I ended up here.”

“That’s because you couldn’t see it. Not really. You had an idea of a hospital, but in your fear, you couldn’t make it real. That’s the secret to disappearing. It’s why you have only appeared in places you already knew, your house and my shop. You could see them in your mind’s eye. If you can see the place you want to go, really see it as clear as day, getting there is as simple as opening your eyes.”

“So, I need to think of a place I want to go and...make it real?”

“Yes. You need to see every square inch of the place. You need to reach out and touch it, and then you can use your mind to pull you there.”

“The only one place I know that well is Mama’s house.”

“Then that is the place you must imagine.”

I took a deep breath. I pictured the kitchen where I made peanut butter sandwiches. I imagined the cracks on the roof of the ceiling, and the stairwell where I hugged Mama after I found her alive the night before. I placed our ugly couch in the middle of the room.

“Do you have it?” Elka asked. “Can you picture it in your mind’s eye?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

Elka grabbed my hand. “Then take me there. Take a pinch of the dust, reach out with your mind, and throw. Then, let your mind pull yourself there.”

I grabbed a pinch of the precious pixie dust. I breathed deeply. “Are you sure?”

“No, but I trust you.”

I reached out with my mind’s eye as I threw the pixie dust on the ground. A bright purple light engulfed us both and then we were gone.

*

I LET MY MIND PULL me into Mama’s living room, and we reappeared there in an instant. We hovered again in midair and then crashed upon the ground, this time avoiding any tables or other obstacles between us and the hard wood.

“I did it!” I shouted. “I did it! I did it! Mama! You won’t believe what I did!”

But my excitement was short lived. When my eyes focused again, I saw our living room in shambles, and the front door busted wide open. The couch was no longer propped against the door but flipped over in the middle of the room.

“Mama!” I turned to Elka. “What happened here?”

“The Cult of the Bloody Dagger,” Elka said through gritted teeth. I had never seen her angry before, and it scared me. Her jaw locked tight and her eyes burned like fiery embers. “They couldn’t find you, so they took your mother. I thought it would take them longer to figure out the connection.”

“What connection?”

“If you are a pixie, then your blood came from somewhere.”

“My mother! My mother is a pixie?”

“Yes. And the Cult of the Bloody Dagger took her, just like they took your father so many years ago. They thought he had the spark of magic in him, but they were wrong. His blood didn’t open the portal, so they strung him up to make it look like a lynching, just like they’ve done so many times.”

“You knew that this would happen!”

“That’s why I’m here, in Chandler. I have protected pixies from the Cult of the Bloody Dagger for decades, but for each one I saved, another was lost. Luckily, they didn’t have the complete spell until most of our kind was gone, but now, I fear they can unleash Hell on Earth.”

“That makes you a terrible protector.”

“Since your mother has fallen into their hands,” Elka said, cracking her knuckles and readying for a fight. “I can’t disagree with you.”

“We have to save her. Where is she?”

Elka looked out the window. It was pitch black. We had worked through the day and into the night. “They will take her to the mystery spot and bleed her dry to open the portal.”

I rushed toward the door. “Then that’s where we’re going.”

Elka grabbed my arm. “We’re too late to go that way. You must picture it in your mind’s eye.”

“I don’t know the park that well.”

“Yes, you do.”

I closed my eyes and tried to focus, but my mind raced in front of me. Images of mother, strung up on a tree, tormented me. “I can’t—I can’t—”

“I can,” Elka said. “I can be your eyes. Place your hand on my forehead.”

I did as I was told. “What am I supposed to see?”

“Just wait. I am reconstructing the park in my mind’s eye. You should see it in your mind, too. Just focus. Focus on my thoughts.”

“I can’t—It’s too much—”

“You can do this. You must. For your mother.”

She was right. I took a deep breath and calmed myself. After a few seconds, the details of the park filtered in. Daddy’s hanging tree, the grassy knoll where Duncan and his ilk first attacked me, and finally the mystery spot itself. Soon I could feel every blade of grass under my feet.

“Do you have it?”

I grabbed a pinch of pixie dust. “I have it.”

“Then take me there.”

I threw the pixie dust on the ground and we were gone in a sea of purple, leaving the disheveled mess of Mama’s home in our wake.